Abdel Fattah al‑Burhan

Force in Play

De facto head of state, controls central and eastern Sudan

Two of every five Sudanese now lack enough food. Three UN agencies said on May 15 that 19.5 million people across Sudan face crisis-level hunger after three years of war between the national army and a paramilitary force.

Updated 2 hours ago

Force in Play

Leading SAF military campaign; returned government to Khartoum in January 2026

The United Nations reopened its Khartoum headquarters on Thursday, nearly three years after staff fled Sudan's capital when civil war broke out in April 2023. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) recaptured Khartoum from the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in March 2025, and more than two million displaced people have since returned to a city with shattered infrastructure, limited electricity, and contaminated water. The reopening makes the UN the latest international body to resume operations, following the International Organization for Migration's (IOM) return in September 2025 and a Sudanese government relocation from Port Sudan in January 2026.

Updated Apr 9

Force in Play

Leading SAF military operations from Port Sudan and recaptured Khartoum

Sudan's civil war has entered a new phase defined by drone strikes that hit markets, hospitals, and roads with near-daily frequency. On March 26, two strikes killed at least 28 civilians — 22 when a drone hit a parked oil truck at a market in Saraf Omra, North Darfur, igniting part of the market and killing an infant among the dead, and six more along a road in Kordofan. In the first two months of 2026 alone, monitors recorded 198 drone strikes by both sides, at least 52 of which caused civilian casualties, killing 478 people.

Updated Mar 26

Built World

Leading Sudan's military in civil war while navigating GERD dispute

Ethiopia flipped the switch on Africa's largest dam September 9, 2025, without Egypt's blessing. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam holds 74 billion cubic meters of water—enough to double Ethiopia's power output and, Egypt fears, strangle the Nile River that 107 million Egyptians depend on for nearly all their freshwater. Fourteen years of construction, funded almost entirely by Ethiopian citizens buying bonds and donating paychecks, delivered 5,150 megawatts of capacity. Egypt called it an existential threat and demanded a binding water-sharing treaty. Ethiopia built it anyway.

Updated Jan 7